


bring back the fire in her eyes

by baby_panda20



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Hallucinations, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Mild Blood, Reflection, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29389614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baby_panda20/pseuds/baby_panda20
Summary: Ty Lee sees a familiar face in her mirror, a face belonging to a girl full of lost hope and the crushing weight of loneliness. Both girls want answers, and they want them now.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	bring back the fire in her eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! I haven’t uploaded anything here in literally 6 months (whoops) but I got this idea from an amazing TikTok collab between @lia_faye and @mutant_kid_cosplay. I’ve been getting really into ATLA in the past couple months and I thought it would be interesting to explore this ship because we were **robbed** in canon. These are new characters for me so I hope my characterization is accurate! Fair warning: this is gonna get very angsty because, well...it’s me. All potential triggers are in the tags! So anyway, please leave kudos and some nice reviews if you enjoy it! Thank you for reading!

“Do you blame yourself?” the all-too-familiar cadence brushed past Ty Lee’s ears like a gust of wind, its presence suffocating. The chilled air circled around her head to the back of her neck and down her spine, making every last little hair on her body stand on end. She shivered sharply, desperately trying to force the nagging voice that had infiltrated her psyche back to the abyss it had risen from.  _ Not today. Please don’t make me do this today. _ She knew full well the voice could hear all her thoughts, but that was the least of her concerns. She gripped the edge of her wooden dresser like a lifeline until it felt like all the blood had drained from her fingers and millions of tiny pinpricks had replaced any previous sensation within them. She was still waiting for the day that same numb feeling would disappear from the rest of her body. 

Her gaze quickly became focused on the ornate burgundy floor beneath her. She struggled to fight the urge to acknowledge what she knew awaited her in the silver mirror hanging on the wall in front of her: the same familiar figure that had been haunting her dreams, her memories, and almost every waking moment in between. Every day for months, the figure asked her questions, and every day for months, Ty Lee had no answers, only questions of her own that she kept trapped in her head. How could she possibly expect Ty Lee to know anything? How could that godforsaken figure continue to demand answers when she knew damn well that Ty Lee couldn’t even understand  _ why _ she would…

The voice grumbled, unsatisfied with the ex-acrobat’s lack of response. It didn’t matter that she’d appeared out of nowhere at the break of dawn, just as Ty Lee had finished constructing her elaborate signature braid. Even as a lurking phantom in the brunette’s eyes, she was still calling the shots. But somehow, as annoying as it was, Ty Lee still found herself smiling at the concept. She could only imagine the glare she was no doubt receiving in response to her grin. 

“Well?” The voice snapped her out of her reverie, practically pecking at her skull until a dull throbbing pulsated across her forehead. Ty Lee never missed her stubbornness, that’s for sure. Her tongue felt like it was swelling in her throat as she searched her brain for the right words to say, but came up empty. The voice barely gave her time to suck in a breath of composure before speaking again, projecting her voice so it ricocheted off the walls inside and out of her head. 

“If you’re not going to speak, the least you could do is look at me,” the voice echoed, “I promise I won’t bite.” Although it was filled with bravado and attempts at humor, Ty Lee knew how to peel back the layers of pride and unmask the insecurity that laid at the core of the voice’s demand. The casualness of her words hid a plea behind them:  _ “Am I still a person? Look into my eyes and make sure no unloveable monster is reflected back at you.”  _

“Ty Lee, I order you to-” the brunette suddenly cut the command off with the silent movement of her head up towards the mirror. She kept the motion constant, yet painfully slow, barely preventing the voice from growing frantic. She shut her eyes for an almost unnoticeable moment, mentally bracing herself so that she wouldn’t reflexively look away from the mirror in shock, thereby upsetting the figure even further.

Soon, Ty Lee’s eyes focused on the mirror, darting back and forth between her own reflection and the fuzzy image of the girl that humbly stood behind her. Her eyes ran up and down the figure’s blurred, unclear appearance, scanning it thoroughly. Whether it was meant as an act of reassurance that this was still the one she knew and loved or simply a means of preventing her eyes from staying in one place long enough to gloss over with hot tears, she couldn’t say. 

“You used to not be able to keep your eyes off of me,” the figure remarked coldly, forcing a small scoff. 

“That was before…” Ty Lee retorted weakly, wincing at how ridiculous she must sound as she conversed with her vanity. 

“What’s so different now? I’m still me, you’re still you. I’m right beside you, just like it was before.”

“But you weren’t there before! You weren’t there for me until you needed me. Where were you when I ran away to join the circus? Where were you every time I couldn’t take the pressure of being exactly like my sisters?”

“That’s the beauty of the way things are now. Every time I couldn’t be there then, I can be here now. And besides, you were the one who broke things off at the Boiling Rock. I didn’t  _ ask _ for your treachery!”

“You and I both know you deserved it. I’m sorry that it had to come to that, but I’m not sorry I did it.” The silence that followed hung in the air for so long that it almost became tangible.

“Why haven’t you answered my question yet?” The voice abruptly inquired, causing Ty Lee to flinch as she pulled back from the mirror. 

“What?” Ty Lee whispered in a voice so low and quiet it was hard to tell if any sound came out at all.

“Well, it’s quite common for a person in this situation to feel a kind of...guilt,” the figure stated bluntly, dancing a small, golden crown across her pale fingers. Ty Lee swallowed roughly at the sight of the item and its muted sheen, unsure of why it had appeared out of thin air or how the figure possibly could have acquired it. She fixed her eyes on the regal object, watching its parts rotate and weave gracefully. The figure cupped it in her hand possessively, as if she were tapping into the recollections of what might have been. The soft, high-pitched  _ plink  _ of nails on metal only exacerbated the throbbing pain in the brunette’s temples. 

“Where’d that...What situation? Why should I-” Ty Lee’s eyes widened in realization and she froze in place, unable to move any of her muscles from their tense, locked position. She felt puffs of air leaving her lungs, but none of it seemed to come back in. The figure said nothing, only watched as the brunette’s memories came back to hit her like a brick wall. 

_ She had just gotten out of the institution for good...they said she was doing better, she’d been out for three weeks and she was doing  _ better _. They lied to me. They lied to her. She wouldn’t let me see her until that day. She promised I could come see her at the palace. She promised me she was all right. Tell that to the sword. Still warm, still covered in scarlet when I found her. She was the one who first found me. But I couldn’t find her in the end.  _

_ “Do you blame yourself?” I blame everyone else. After all, it was her mother’s fault for making her think she was a monster. It was her father’s fault for turning her into the ruthless conqueror she became. It was Katara’s fault for taking her down. It was Zuko’s fault for locking her away like that. It was  _ her _ fault for being so goddamn stubborn she couldn’t just let the treatment  _ work. 

_ Maybe I could have seen her sooner if I didn’t abandon her along with Mai. Maybe I could have been more involved while she was in the institution, I could’ve been there to help oversee her treatment, I could’ve stayed home in the first place and been there for her instead of following some stupid dream. I could’ve been the one person in her life who actually gave a shit so that maybe she wouldn’t feel so worthless that she would go and… _

_ I loved her. I  _ love _ her. So why did I never show it...before it was too late? _

“Yes,” Ty Lee finally responded to the figure’s weighted question, her voice lacking any emotion. Her face was tight and sticky from several tracks of tears that had flooded from her rosy red eyes and scattered across the dresser, left to be absorbed by the wood or evaporated into the dry air around her. Her eyes burned with the memories, with the pain, with the roaring, passionate fire that that godforsaken figure had left behind in her head and in her heart. 

“Well, you shouldn’t,” the voice replied as she coaxed Ty Lee’s eyes back up to meet hers. The brunette found her head moving up towards the mirror again, but this time it felt like it was wholly against her will. 

“You make it sound easy.” 

The figure sighed solemnly, linking her hands behind her back. Ty Lee watched her in silence, surprised she’d revert to a state that had become so painfully familiar to her. “You know, over the past—Agni, how long has it been now? Time has a way of just melting away in here—I’ve had a lot of time to be alone. Just me and my incessant thoughts that have eaten away at my brain for so long it feels like some rotting carcass left for anything to feed on. And it was sort of, I don’t know, nice, at first. No one to pressure me, to tell me how to act, how to strike, how to dominate. But as days went by, more and more whispers crept into my head. Then the whispers turned to shouts, and the shouts turned to screams, and I just…”

“You don’t have to say any more.” Ty Lee’s voice quivered, wishing now more than ever that she could hold the figure’s hands in her own and take all that hurt away. 

The figure ignored her, continuing anyway. “Do you want to know why I asked you that question?” Ty Lee stared blankly for several moments, noticing how the details of the figure’s appearance that she’d forced herself to forget were beginning to fill in more and more, like pieces of a puzzle. She saw her long, silk robe, the same one she wore that day. She admired the way the maroon fabric fit her, sliding loosely down her shoulders and flowing like a river down her arms. Her inky black hair cascaded down her back, ragged bangs now fully grown out and hanging in front of each of her shoulders. Ty Lee winced at the lack of color in the girl’s face, the way it lacked the warmth that once burned so brightly within it. Goddamnit, she missed her. She missed those rare, beautiful embers that fueled her unending passion until they fizzled to nothing but acrid smoke over time. 

It took the ex-acrobat a moment to meet the figure’s eyes in a way she hadn’t in quite some time. She finally relished the opportunity to look into them, feeling her aura shine through even through the glass prison and the...other...gaping void that stood between them. Those honey eyes never failed to make Ty Lee’s heart melt like caramel in the sun. They always told stories that her lips never could. Stories of her past, of happier times before everyone around her learned to keep their distance and her heart grew to be more hollow than it was when it stopped beating. Shiny, golden eyes, like precious coins that Ty Lee held in her pocket until they fell through the hole that they burned in the fabric. The girl in the mirror stared back at her with a sense of patient tranquility that was utterly foreign to them both. Perhaps she developed it from having to cope with the relentless orders and impulses that orbited around her head for as long as she could remember. 

Ty Lee flinched to refocus herself before nodding minutely in response to the girl’s new question, barely enough for the other girl to see. “I asked you because...I wanted to know that I wasn’t the only one wracked with whatever this feeling is. I wish I could name it, but I’ve never been known for that sort of inane reflection. Even when all I have left is my own emotions. But in all my time alone, I  _ have  _ learned to stop trying to blame the rest of the world...especially you. It was never your fault.”

“But you said-”

“I didn’t mean it, I swear. I just...you haven’t responded before. You’ve been pretending like I’m not there. I know I’m not there like you’d expect, but...I’ve missed talking to someone besides the voices in my head.”

“Oh,” Ty Lee sighed. She kept her eyes on the girl, finding a new sense of comfort in her presence. She’s never seen her be so open, so honest and vulnerable. But Ty Lee still knew that girl was truly  _ her _ , the girl with the fire roaring deep inside her and the wild aura that never seemed to settle on a single hue. The girl who was cold and calculating on the surface but hotter than the blue flames that once burst from her palms underneath. The girl she loved and who loved her enough to bear the rawest parts of her soul to her after all this time. 

As she took it all in for the first time in forever, Ty Lee suddenly caught sight of a pool of crimson that stained the girl’s otherwise colorless lips. The liquid leaked out from the small gap between her lips like a faucet, trickling down her chin and dripping into the desolate dimension beneath her. Ty Lee recoiled briefly in fear at the horror of the sight before forcing herself to focus again.

The girl in the glass lifted a hand wordlessly, but instead of moving to wipe the scarlet trail, she pressed it flat against her side of the mirror, beckoning the girl on the other side to do the same. Ty Lee stepped slowly towards the mirror and easily reached over the short dresser, placing her fingers one by one in line with the other girl’s.

“Ty Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?” 

“Just do it...please.” 

Ty Lee followed the girl’s instructions, startled by the uncharacteristic desperation in her voice. She stayed there for what felt like an eternity in silence, resisting the urge to let her eyelids flutter open. She kept them shut because she trusted the girl, even if the girl didn’t quite trust her yet. 

“I’m sorry.”

An almost inaudible, mystical whisper finally came from directly behind the brunette’s head. Ty Lee’s eyes flew open at the distant sound before she could stop them, but she was met with nothing but her own tired eyes and blush pink bed frame. She sighed deeply, keeping her hand flush against the frigid mirror and ignoring how her fingerprints left cloudy smudges imprinted on its surface. She didn’t even think about letting go for several moments, lost in a labyrinth of thoughts, until a fellow Kyoshi Warrior pushed her door open.  _ Shit, how much time has passed? _

“Hey, why aren’t you dressed? Suki’s looking for you!” She didn’t notice Ty Lee’s hand attached to the mirror or her sunken eyes, or if she did, she didn’t care enough to comment. 

“Oh! Um, tell her I’ll be out in ten minutes,” Ty Lee responded hurriedly, watching the girl nod to acknowledge her and slowly shut her door to give her privacy. Ty Lee’s eyes went back to the mirror for a moment as she pried her fingers off of the glass, staring with a fond smile at the pale white discoloration that the pressure left on her palm. She closed her hand into a loose fist, imagining a certain hand filling in the gaps. 

_ I forgive you, Azula. _

  
  



End file.
